Boy from the North Country: A Novel

by Sam Sussman

A fiction finalist for the 75th National Jewish Book Awards

“This portrait of a young man caring for his mother is a rare combination of boldface intrigue and profound emotion.” —Oprah Daily, The Best Fall Books of 2025

“Come for the riveting father-son mystery, stay for the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory.” —Kirkus (starred review)

A son returns home to his dying mother to discover the astonishing truth of his origins and the secrets of a woman whose life and wisdom he is only beginning to understand

When Evan, twenty-six, is suddenly called home from his life abroad to the secluded farmhouse where he was raised by his mother, June, there is so much he does not yet know. He doesn’t know his mother is dying. He still doesn’t know the identity of his biological father or the elusive story of his mother’s creatively intense, emotionally turbulent romance with Bob Dylan, whom Evan reveres as an artist and whom strangers have long insisted he resembles. He doesn’t know the secrets of his mother’s life before he was born or what drove her to leave New York City for a completely different existence.

In this deeply moving debut novel, Sam Sussman writes one of the most tender and intimate mother-son relationships of our era. Caring for his mother as her illness worsens, and as she begins to tell him truths he has waited so long to hear, Evan comes to understand the startling gift this extraordinary woman has bequeathed him.

Inspired by the author’s own uncertain celebrity paternity, Boy from the North Country is an emotionally searing meditation on the most essential human loss, healing, memory, and the redemptive power of love.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Audiobook, Historical Fiction, Family, Music

334 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 16, 2025

About the author

Sam Sussman grew up in the Hudson Valley. He graduated with a BA from Swarthmore College and an MPhil from the University of Oxford and has lived in Berlin and Jerusalem. His writing has been recognized by BAFTA and published in Harper’s Magazine. Sam has taught writing seminars in India, Chile, and England and participated in the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. He lives in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan and his native Hudson Valley.

source: Amazon

Reviews

[Canadian Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

You don’t have to be a Bob Dylan fan to appreciate this story. Although when you look at the author’s pic, it’s hard not to deny the similarity.

Twenty-six year old Evan gets the call from his mom, a holistic healer and clean eater asks, Can you please return to the States? I’m having surgery for cancer.

This story is the reconnection of that sacred relationship. Mother and son. As the chemo process starts, she begins to share her story of her earlier years when she was in New York.
She flips through her memories, struggles and horrors. Evan being unaware of the history she carried with her. He also gets a glimpse of who his father may be -although we never do get the explicit paternity, it is implicitly drawn.

I did find the middle to meander and be repetitive at times. The many references to literature got a bit overwhelmingly dramatic for me; the writing itself was good but then go down a path that would get too flowery and descriptive.
After reading the acknowledgment, this appears to be more of a memoir.
4⭐️

[Summer · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Bob Dylan fan, the synopsis immediately made me want to read this one. But the stunning mother-and-son tale made me fall in love with it.

Boy from the North Country is so many things. It's a breathtaking work of autofiction that takes a deep introspective dive into identity. The boom is centered around a mystery of the author's paternity and the possibility that his father could possibly be Bob Dylan. The story also takes an emotional dive into dealing with an only child's loss of his mother, who is the only parent in his life. But what makes this book so outstanding is Evan’s relationship with his mother.

Told with profound vulnerability, the intimacy between Evan and his mother was deeply moving. The way he and his mother read to each other reminded me of my own relationship with my sons. His mother's wisdom and teachings of love to her son were just beautiful. Captivating, poetical, and devastating Sam Sussman is such a gifted storyteller.

I would highly recommend this one to fans of character-driven stories, readers who enjoy autofiction, and Bob Dylan fans. Mothers of sons will especially love this one.

I listened to the audiobook version of Boy from the North Country by Sam Sussman which is read by the author. If you decide to pick this one up, I highly recommend this format!

Boy from the North Country by Sam Sussman will be available on September 16. Many thanks to Penguin Random House Audio for the gifted audiobook!

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evan grows up in Goshen, a place where Judaism is something you quietly admit to the neighbors after they notice you’re not eating the pot roast. His mother June is a health-food prophetess, forever chasing the next miracle vegetable while hiding from her son the rather large fact of her cancer. He comes home from London to find her gray, gaunt, and serving roasted cauliflower as if Yom Kippur were being catered by a yoga studio.

The father situation? A disaster. Biological dad gone, stepdads in and out like seasonal sales, and in their wake a boy who starts to suspect the only man who makes sense as a candidate is Bob Dylan. After all, strangers point out the uncanny resemblance in gas stations, teachers send him midnight emails, and his own reflection mocks him. He listens to “I want you, I want you so bad” and takes it like a DNA test.

Layered over this is the Jewish inheritance that no one can romanticize away. June’s family line runs through Chelmno, where entire branches were cut down. Evan remembers Holocaust photographs so vividly they invade his dreams, and when he sees his mother’s body wasted by chemo, the comparison feels unbearable. His life is an ongoing commentary on survival, on how Jews manage to find laughter in horror, argument in love, and theology in the timing of the freight train through Goshen.

He studies Dylan’s lyrics the way other Jewish kids studied Talmud, mining lines for clues about his fate. “Play your harp until your lips bleed” reads like a commandment. “Like a rolling stone” sounds suspiciously like a family motto. He convinces himself that with blood like that in his veins he must be destined for art, not algebra.

Of course, his mother insists the real inheritance is not celebrity bloodlines but her stubborn creed that “nothing in life is holier than love.” To Evan this sounds like a recipe for serial heartbreak, but she will not let go of it, the way Jews cling to rituals that drive their children mad and keep them alive at the same time.

"... I glanced at a wall plaque engraved with the names of the hospital’s benefactors. Irving, Teitelbaum, Lerner, Weinstein— what were we trying to prove? That Jews are the model minority, or that we aren’t a minority at all? I felt uncomfortable with the ostentatious public display. In Goshen, I had never wanted anyone to know I was Jewish. A few miles away was Kiryas Joel, the village of Hasidic Jews. Sometimes, when my school bus passed the village, other boys shoved my face to the window, pointed to the Hasidic men on the street, and asked which kike was my father. I had tried to laugh at the irony that the Hasidim wouldn’t even think of me as Jewish. We had never gone to synagogue. I hadn’t yet discovered that twentieth-century American literature had been significantly influenced by Jewish writers: Roth, Bellow, Ozick, Malamud, Paley, Gornick, Mailer, Salinger, Potok. I wasn’t even circumcised. The day we read Anne Frank’s Diary, Terry Murphy chased me down the hall, shouting that he was going to run me out of Goshen like Hitler chased my ancestors out of Europe. I barricaded myself in a bathroom stall, pleading with the lock to hold as Terry roundhouse kicked the door. My face was marked with bruises and dried blood when I came home that afternoon. My mother insisted that we drive to the school, then refused to leave until the principal met her. She was angrier than I had ever seen her, and when the principal at last met with us she told him in unapologetic terms that the school had a legal responsibility to protect me and was failing so abysmally that a court would consider the principal an accomplice to the violence against me. Even her threat of a lawsuit didn’t change anything. None of my attackers were ever disciplined..."

[Amina · Rating 2 out of 5]

✰ 2.5 stars ✰

“For it is only memory that makes each of us a self.”

Sometimes fiction is a way for us to atone for our sins, to find a way to clear our guilty conscience of what we failed to do when we had the time to do it differently. To pick one facet of a missed life is what Sam Sussman attempts to achieve as the Boy from the North Country, hoping that in the final days of caring his mother during the debilitating stage of her treatment from ovarian cancer, he may find that glimmer of truth of the true identity of his unknown father, the most possible being Bob Dylan, as to the numerous accounts in which he's been said to share a liking with him.

And I mean, we're told many a time of that glaring similarity.

Much of what I know of Bob Dylan and his music comes from various media (looking at you Chalamet) and a Wikipedia read. There were moments where I felt like I was reading a factoid on his entire life. it did not impact me in any way nor did it even reflect on Evan's personality so why bother? 🙅🏻‍♀️ I was not also expecting such a tedious breakdown of his mother's relationship with him, which as a fictionalized romanticized idolized interpretation, it left me slightly squeamish. Maybe because he's still alive, it just felt uncomfortable, especially if there is no basis of truth to it. 

“It took a long time,” she continued, “for me to understand that it doesn’t matter how beautiful the rest of the world finds you. It’s about making peace with our own reflection.”

For in the course of life, what does it matter? For who was it that had always been by his side for twenty six years, that in the final days, that generosity and kindness children could be returned, and even then it could never measure to the love we took for granted, the unflinching disbelief of a bitter truth. She was my mother. She could not get cancer. 💔😢 And for that, as much as this did not read as a story, rather a memoir, I cannot bring myself to be too harsh or critical to the content, for who am I to deprive a son of his only way of processing his own grief and sadness. 

So I won't judge for the harsh reality that comes with caring for an ailing patient - the detailed lengths to show how affected his mother's Sunshine Boy was helpless to her pain and only could offer meager support to alleviate it. I also cannot even be too judgmental of the bleakness to his mother's backstory; even if it was pushed to extremes of incredulity of shock value, I have no basis to say that maybe some part of the unfortunate abuse of such a depressing past, may carry a hint of truth.

“Of course I wanted a story larger than all that loss.”

Sadly, the writing felt very pretentious at times, almost full of themselves, which affected the tone that lacked the desire to connect with the reader. Almost as if they were relaying the days leading up to the final moments, almost as if it was a prize that they had achieved. It was also very repetitive, disjointed in how her memories overlapped with his reflection on what he'd learned, which became exhausting. 😮‍💨 And it's odd that with a message that said nothing in life is holier than love, there was so little heart to the tone.

Still, a few moments touched me, ones which I felt my own searing loss and regret - a finality that as much as you ache for more, the desperation of finding the best cure from an unaffected hospital staff that your tragedy is just one of many they have to deal with - it's an emotional searing sentiment. ❤️‍🩹 She was passing to a place I could not follow. And to whoever has experienced that sensation that every breath spent is a moment longer with the ones you love, then it truly is only up to us to do our best to be there when the time comes. ​🙏🏻

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Dylan still hadn’t said a word. There was an aura about him, and I wondered if it would shatter the moment he spoke. It was hard to describe his magnetism, the way everything oriented itself around him, the air and silence. He was handsome, even if I’d seen better-looking men. No, it was that I could hear the music when I looked at him. One glance at him and “Just Like a Woman” was playing in my mind. Everyone else must have been feeling this, too, different songs playing in every heart. We’d all kissed and smoked and cursed the war to his words and rhythms. He didn’t have to say anything; just standing there he was a silent repository of other people’s memories. I felt the awe and fear of what that could do to a life.”

While nobody knows what all of these projections actually did to Bob Dylan’s life, Sam Sussman attempts here to capture all of the conflicting emotions that the “idea” of Dylan, the very real possibility of being his secret son, brought to his own life. And to that of his mother, the magnificent, auburn-haired and doe-eyed Fran Sussman.

What led to this novel and its fictional rendering of very real truths, was a sublime nonfiction piece that Sam Sussman published in Harper’s in 2021, a memoir essay entitled “The Silent Type - On (possibly) being Bob Dylan’s son”.

While the essay offered a son’s glimpse into his mother’s fiercely held secret affair with Dylan in the early 70’s in New York City, “Boy from the North Country” conjures her own imagined life account in a voice that is searing, soaring and unapologetic. Fran becomes June: artist, lover, mother, eternal seeker.

In three sections entitled Dawn, Day and Night (bringing to mind the ghost of Elie Wiesel’s devastating trilogy), the novel unfolds like a Kaddish recitation, elevating a son’s love for his mother as she is dying of cancer.

A poignant song of mourning and grief, with a howling silence at its core and missing lyrics never to be recovered, “Boy from the North Country” ultimately paints over the white void left in the wake of self-absorbed geniuses who don’t seem to think or care about the relationship messes they leave behind.

Fran would have loved that.

[Sandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Review of Boy from the North Country by Sam Sussman

Sam Sussman’s debut novel, Boy from the North Country, is clearly a deeply personal work—one shaped by grief, memory, and the aching desire to understand a parent more fully before it’s too late. The premise is compelling: a son returns home to his dying mother and uncovers long-held secrets about her past, including a possible romantic connection to Bob Dylan and the truth of his own origins. At its core, this is a story about the bond between mother and son, the fragility of life, and the search for identity.

It’s evident that writing this novel was a cathartic experience for Sussman, particularly as he processed the loss of his own mother. That emotional depth does come through in places, especially in the tender moments between Evan and June as her health declines. Unfortunately, the power of those scenes is often diluted by a tendency toward repetition and overly graphic detail.

Certain descriptions—like repeated mentions of June’s auburn hair, the physical deterioration of her body, and the narrator’s own unwashed state—felt unnecessarily excessive and, at times, distracting. The rawness may have been intended to evoke intimacy or realism, but instead, it bordered on discomfort without adding much emotional or narrative weight. Some moments, like detailed references to body odor or bodily functions, seemed more jarring than poignant.

Structurally, the novel also struggles to maintain cohesion. The story occasionally veers off into historical and cultural commentary—particularly about Jewish history—that, while potentially interesting on their own, felt shoehorned in rather than organically woven into the narrative. These digressions disrupted the emotional arc and made the story feel scattered.

Ultimately, while Boy from the North Country offers moments of heartfelt reflection and explores meaningful themes of family, identity, and loss, it is hampered by uneven pacing, overindulgent prose, and disjointed storytelling. Sussman clearly has a story worth telling, and I respect the vulnerability it took to tell it—but this debut may have benefitted from a firmer editorial hand.

[Shantha (ShanthasBookEra) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to follow shortly. The first half was slow and then the second half was incredible! About a young man's relationship with his mother and the impact of learning about his celebrity paternity.

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boy from the North Country involves protagonist Evan’s relationship with his parents. He travels from his home in London to New York to care for his mother after she tells him she has cancer. He has heard many times from strangers that he looks like Bob Dylan and thinks Dylan may be his father. During his time caregiving for his mother, she reveals that she had a relationship with Dylan in the 1970s, as well as relating other stories from her past.

The book is about biological paternity, and whether it matters, especially when that parent has been absent from the person’s life. Other topics are loss, healing, memory, and love. It is an intimate story of a mother-son relationship and is mostly introspective. The writing is strong, but it lacks dramatic tension, and I found my attention wandering. I liked it enough to read another book by this author.

[Lee Collier · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an exceptionally moving novel. I don't know of any other story I have ever read that exposed the physical, emotional, and spiritual connection of a mother and child. This novel looks at the last months of a woman's life through the eyes of her son. Summoned home from England, Sam finds his mother in the grips of cancer, something Jenn and I have just recently experienced with her father.

There were so many parts of this novel that felt kin to our just lived experience. I felt Sam did an amazing job walking the reader through the miasma of emotion exhibited in the final days of life. You can tell, as this is autofiction, how deeply Sam loved his mother exhibited in the journey he lead us through Evan and June.

Sam is an exceptionally intelligent individual, his prose is not only graceful but methodic in delivery. His knowledge of the arts exceptional as well. We are guided through memory of Sam's mother, June during her youthful escapades. Her desire to shed childhood trauma through acting and painting. Her chance encounter with Bob Dylan which presents a large arc within the story itself but never pulls away from the main story, the bond of mother and son.

If you have been through the process of saying goodbye to a loved one at the hands of cancer and subsequently the grief that follows, this story may be comforting to know you are not alone. The helplessness Sam portrays in the final stretch of this story is so difficult to relive but cathartic in ways that those who have experienced.

Overall this is a 4.5 and a genuinely great but difficult read. Sam has proven himself a worthy new artist in his own right and excited for what may follow this substantive work.

[Charlie Tyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sensitive debut novel offers an intimate portrait of a mother and son, focused on the final days of the mother's life. What begins as a gentle, unassuming, realist depiction of upstate New York develops into a profound meditation on art, death, secrecy, and identity, as the protagonist learns things about his mother he never knew before. That she was once Bob Dylan's lover turns out to be crucial--but not the most important thing about her.

As the mother relates her memories, the young man listens, and the novel expertly interweaves past and present. Some of the most exuberant pages capture the New York City art world of the 1970s, a milieu where abstract painters preach metaphysical doctrines, method actors fire guns onstage, and folk musicians sing of a new world coming into view.

This is also a story about a difficult death, and while the novel's critique of the medical establishment is subtle, it may powerfully resonate with many of its American readers.

A remarkable novel about a remarkable woman. I received an early copy; I expect this will be one of the major books of 2025.

[Cheryl Sokoloff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sam Sussman (Evan in the book), left his home and his mother, to experience the world, what he believed was the only way to become the writer he dreamed of becoming.

In his mid twenties, his mother called him to come home. She was sick with cancer. He came to be her caretaker. It was only during this time, that his mother finally started to tell him things she about her life, and what brought her to the Hudson Valley, where she raised him.

This book is his journey to finally becoming a writer, and his mother’s story (and also a part of Bob Dylan’s story). It is autofiction ( 1 or 2 words?). And finally, Sam found inspiration from Amos Oz’s work (A Tale of Love and Darkness, in particular).

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Maureen Grigsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story of the love of a mother and son. Heartbreaking in many ways, but full of strength and courage from both of them. Beautiful!

[Dianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that asks the question "What if?". An interesting read that explores the possibility of being Bob Dylan's son, the love between a mother and son, and the reconciliation of the past, present, and future. After reading the Acknowledgments, I felt like this may have been a blend of real and imagined while exploring the boundaries.

[Tamara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisitely rendered portrayal of the tender and abiding love between a mother and her son as she faces the end of her life cut short by cancer. I found this novel deeply moving and thought-provoking. This may be my favorite book of 2025.

Top 10 Book of 2025; position: 1

[Onceinabluemoon · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5-5 the ending was so emotional...

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 stars.

[Liz Hein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This broke me a little (a lot).

[Cindy Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars. A emotional read but parts were a little long. I’m not a huge Bob Dylan fan. See my full review on instagram @robertsonsreadingrecs.

[Laura Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5🌟 This is a gripping story. The beginning drew me in, the middle wandered a bit, but the last half of the book was so good. The mother son connection was really beautiful. If you’ve lost a loved one to cancer, this will be a difficult and emotional read. For fans of When the Crane’s Fly South. It’s a fantastic debut.

[Roberto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boy from the North Country is a novel that lingers in the soul long after the final page. Sussman’s prose has a quiet power, pulling you deep into the world of a mother and son as they navigate love, loss, and the weight of long-hidden truths. In a world that often expects men to grieve in silence (or not at all), this novel provides a rare, tender, aching exploration of vulnerability.

I had the gift of reading an advanced copy and can't wait to see it out in September. (While waiting, I recommend reading Sam's piece "The Silent Type: On (possibly) being Bob Dylan’s son" in Harper's. It will make you want to preorder immediately.)

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and very moving!

[Stephanie Lackey · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Came for the Dylan storyline, but the mother/son storyline broke me.

[Sophia Kreitman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow I loved this book. Couldn’t put it down. Had to tear myself away from it to get back to reality. Read with tissues. Similar vibes to Crying in H Mart.

This book was a beautiful and heartbreaking story about finding one’s identity and purpose, and those in our lives who shape us into who we are.

As a Bob Dylan fan, I loved the Dylan storyline and references, but you certainly don’t need to be a Dylan fan to appreciate this book. You might just miss some of the song lyrics thrown into the prose. I appreciate how the later half of the book really focused on Evan and June’s relationship, and the Bob Dylan storyline became secondary. (My college radio show at SUNY Binghamton, where the author was a student for one year, was called “Live from the North Country”, so I really appreciated the title).

Hug your loved ones close and gather as much wisdom from them as you can, while you can.

Will be thinking about this book for a while.

[thewanderingjew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boy From the North Country: A Novel, Sam Sussman, author and narrator
This book is read very tenderly, if not also very morosely, by the author. It is a sad story that is loosely based on the author’s own background. Twenty-six-year-old Evan Klausner and his mother June had not seen each other often after he left college. Evan had moved to London while she remained in their farmhouse in Goshen, New York. For most of Evan’s life, he had seriously wondered if his real father was Bob Dylan. He was obsessed with the notion because he had an uncanny resemblance to him, but his mom never revealed her true relationship with Dylan until near the end of her life, and then the idea was still inconclusive.
When June called Evan to reveal that she had cancer, he immediately returned to Goshen to help her. His immediate reaction to their reunion was shock. Once strong and healthy with beautiful auburn hair, she was now a shadow of her former self, and her hair was no longer beautiful. It was graying and dry. Understanding that she is facing a serious illness alone, he vows to stay with her to help her get through this trying time. His loyalty, compassion and level of devotion are truly commendable.
The book explores their relationship and the revelations they each confess. He learns much more about his mother’s past life and is unsure of why she had kept it so secret before. Still, she insists that he listen to her confessions, and he learns about her relationship the very famous Bob Dylan, aka Robert Zimmerman. The “friendship” continued for years, even while he was growing up. The book delves into their secrets, their desires and dreams. It illustrates the effects of their own behavior on each other and on their paths in life.
This is really a very emotional story about Evan’s devotion to his mother and hers to him. As they grow closer through her treatments, his attentive care and kindness is very detailed as is her reaction to it. As they work through the trauma of her illness, a beautiful relationship develops that is very strong and loving, but also doomed. Cancer was robbing June of her beauty and strength, and although she never lost hope and her temperament always remained calm, she was marked by her genetic ancestry. So, although she was a woman who not only advised people how to live a healthier life to enhance their recovery from one thing or another, and she indeed followed a very healthy lifestyle, she could not avoid her inherited genes. June ate well-sourced food, organically grown, practiced yoga and exercised. Although she lived alone, she had her dog Luke as a companion. She was fairly content. Then she discovered she had the cancer that had already afflicted other women in her family.* She did face her diagnosis with courage and hopefulness, always trying to adjust her lifestyle to the demands of the disease, always continuing her healthy behavior to ensure that she would have the strength to fight the effects and the treatment required.
As the reader follows the deterioration of June’s health through the eyes of Evan and June, it seems that June is prepared for whatever happens, but Evan is not, until the inevitable finally does happen. It is a very difficult book to read because the subject is so depressing, and although it is written very lyrically, it is always a tragedy.
*The mutation of the BRCA gene is passed down through the mother and father and will continue to show up generation after generation. The Jews from Eastern Europe have a far greater chance of carrying this mutated gene. June and Evan are Jewish, although they are not practicing Jews.
I never followed Bob Dylan, but the tidbits about him were interesting. I had no interest in learning of the author’s views on illegal immigration, however, but nevertheless, he felt compelled to insert an anecdotal immigrant story to indicate his political views. Bob Dylan plays a major role in the novel, while the immigrant fades quickly into the background and was really irrelevant. The author’s views seem hopeless regarding the genetic tendency to disease and conflicted regarding Judaism. Although June followed a healthy lifestyle, knowing she was susceptible to ovarian and breast cancer because she had the mutation of the BRCA gene, she was unable to avoid it. Tragically, although June was a healer, treating and guiding many patients through illness and trauma, and although she was also a believer in holistic medicine, she was helpless to heal herself, but she was not helpless in her effort to deal with it with dignity. I was unhappy to learn that morphine is quietly being used to end life, not only to make the end of life less painful and uncomfortable. Also, the idea that Doctors do detach themselves from their patients, in the end, regardless of how long they know the patient, because the doctor truly treats only the body, is more and more evident today with the changes that have taken place in our system of medical care and medical records. Our struggles have become prat of a recorded journey rather than a human one. When the body dies, so does the relationship. Perhaps that is the only way a doctor can deal with so much loss. This story of illness, followed by the loss and sorrow that accompanies life’s inevitable end, is difficult to read, but it is very well written.

[Heather Zeaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing Book and I am in love with Sam Sussman's writing. This book is beautiful and yet hard to read. The love between a mother and son is like no other. This is Sam's Debut novel and I know we will be talking about this author for many years to come. I can't wait to read more of his masterpieces. He is brilliant!
My favorite book of 2025 so far!

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

It had never occurred to me that my mother dying was even a possibility, because my mother was not supposed to die. I could understand her only as someone who was alive, because this was the sole way I had known her. It was the condition in which she was familiar to me, and therefore the only conceivable condition in which she could exist. Death was for other people.

Only it's not just for other people of course, and this novel is ultimately a reckoning with that fact. And for me it is a sometimes moving though flawed debut. The entwined emotional states of love, anguish, and obstinate denial as the protagonist, in an evidently thinly fictionalized narrative, cares for and spends time with his mother as she dies over a period of weeks are believably presented. The author/character is only in his mid-twenties during this time, less prepared due to his youth for this experience than he would be as an older man. It is difficult to be impressed by him, but easy to find empathy for him.

The narrative greatly sagged for me in the middle, in which his mother recounts her relationship with Bob Dylan when they were young, living that artist life in which one quotes French and Italian poetry as regularly as lighting up, and paints at the studio of a verbally abusive man who teaches by screaming at you that you don't know how to see anything real, and you tell yourself that you're learning so much from him, man. Just pretty stereotypical. I would have cut the whole Dylan storyline given solely artistic considerations, but of course that's the main commercial hook of this book, the protagonist (and author) being the maybe possibly secret love child of Bob Dylan. There's already been lots written about dying parents.

Whatever. I did buy into the story of the way he and his mother dealt with her terminal illness and death journey, how much they said and how much they left unsaid and unacknowledged at the same time. A reminder of how challenging this work of being human is.

[Mark Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this powerful poignant novel, but since it is about a son in his 20s going home to help his mother who’s dying from ovarian cancer, it clearly will not be a book for everyone. I thought it was extremely well written. This book is also interesting because the mother in her early days was friends with Bob Dylan, and her son coincidentally looks very much like him. The plot toys with the issue of the son (the narrator) actually being the son of Bob Dylan. Lovers of Bob Dylan will enjoy the fact that he is actually in the book.

[Carolyn Field · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not great. Repetitive and he dug too deep into art and literature references, then the drawn out and graphic account of his Mum’s death was too much for me. Disappointedly the answer to his question of his paternity was never realised.

[Louise]

DNF, for now at least, at 39%. Lots of cancer talk and treatment descriptions

[Riva Sciuto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moved me deeply. 💛